Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2024 -

A physician and historian of science and medicine, Brown directs the Office of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health. This book displays his exceptional erudition on a topic of fundamental importance in Western history: the linkage of Jews and disease. Starting with biblical times, Brown provides a comprehensive, authoritative retelling of the story of this association. The most famous link of Jews with illness was the anti-Semitic charge that Jews caused the Black Death (1348-49). This sort of false claim can be found both before and after the mid-14th century, and it continues to appear in an extensive outpouring of anti-Jewish hate related to the rise and spread of COVID. What makes this study distinctive and particularly valuable is Brown's knowledge not only of how Jews were seen by those outside the Jewish community but also of how disease was understood and responded to within the Jewish community. For example, he explores the views of such prominent rabbinical figures as the Maharil (1365-1427), the Maharshal (1510-73), and the great sage Moses Isserles (1530-72). In addition, Brown describes the impact of pandemics in, the Rome ghetto in 1656 and the Prague ghetto in 1713. This is a timely masterpiece.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

Middle-Class Dharma is a thoughtful and readable examination of class-mobility and religion in contemporary India. Ortgren's rich ethnography of an upwardly mobile neighborhood in Udaipur examines the everyday lives of women who aspire to middle-class identities for themselves and their daughters. Defining dharma as "that which holds the world together," Ortgren (Middlebury College) argues that dharma can serve as a helpful analytical framework outside as well as inside Hinduism. She emphasizes that dharma is an integral part of daily life and meaning-making, rather than something limited to explicitly religious contexts and spaces. Through her analysis of dharma, Ortgren draws attention to how religious identities are tied to everyday practices such as food, friendships, and fashion. Middle-Class Dharma consists of six case studies, each focusing on women aspiring to create better lives for themselves and their daughters, while negotiating new dharmic identities for themselves. Examining women's desires, aspirations, and obligations in terms of class, caste, life stage, gender, and dharma, Ortgren's book analyzes how contemporary Hinduism is formed and re-formed in the everyday lives of women. Amust-read for anyone interested in contemporary Hinduism, class and gender in India, and the study of lived religion in general.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty general readers.

Das (Elmhurst Univ.) takes the reader on a trek through the dizzying complexities and interpretations of Jesus, Paul, and the early Church's views on divorce and remarriage. He examines the breathtaking varieties of pre-Christian writings, focusing on placing divorce and remarriage in their social and cultural setting. While demonstrating an impressive awareness of primary sources, he cites an array of scholarly literature. Das displays a command of the finer intricacies of Greek grammar and textual criticism. He guides the reader through the various textual issues in the Greek texts. His primary concern is with the "exception clause" in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9, as well as those similar verses in Mark and Luke. Das also explores, at length, Paul and the early Church's views on the subject. His book is a balanced, judicious, and thorough treatment of divorce and remarriage in early Christianity. Having researched the topic exhaustively, he concludes that the "first Christ-believers tended to reject remarriage apart from cases where a spouse had died." While readers may disagree with his results, they will be challenged to mount a reply. Das's impressive book is certain to become a standard work in the field.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students through faculty.

Front-line health care workers (including this reviewer), religious leaders, and society at large were spiritually, practically, and medically unprepared for COVID-19. Nor could they have foreseen the religious, medical, and political implications that lingered after the pandemic's most acute phase. Mikles (Texas Tech Univ.) explores how COVID-19 shaped practices of grief, religious communities, and health care. The author brilliantly combines theoretical sophistication and sensitive qualitative interviews, allowing theory to inform reflection on life, and life to push back on abstract theology and theory in conversation with health care professionals, religious leaders, and those who lost loved ones to the pandemic. It shows how religious communities transformed religious and ritual practices of grieving to deal with the pandemic's horrors. While much will be written about the pandemic, this book is an important first look at its impact on grief and grieving in different religious communities. The book's drawback it that it is centered on experiences in the state of Texas, which in some ways has a unique political and religious culture. Still, students of American religion as well as religious leaders and health care professionals will find this book heartbreaking, illuminating, and informative.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through graduate students; professionals.

The Book of Mormon is accepted worldwide as religious scripture and companion volume to the Bible. Until the appearance of the present volume, this reviewer--who has long experience with this particular subfield of religious studies--would have been skeptical that a single individual could adequately address the textual and historical complexity of the text. (Bibles require editorial committees with membership numbering in scores and sometimes hundreds.) This one-scholar edition, however, stands well on its own. Hardy (history and religious studies, Univ. of North Carolina, Asheville) presents the Book of Mormon as historical artifact. His introductory and interpretive matter acknowledges the Book of Mormon's complicated origin and religious claims, tying together the work internally and into American religious history of the 1820s. Hardy's formatting, headings for clarity, use of literary structures where appropriate, and numbering repetitive names serve to avoid confusion. A generous complement of footnotes provides interpretive links internally and with the Bible. This annotated edition will be required reading for those in religious studies and for those wishing to avoid the missionizing nature of other editions. Those who want one copy of the Book of Mormon for scholarly readers across many fields will find that this one will serve well.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

Evidence for this comprehensive and concise volume, which analyzes the confluence of early American politics and Protestant religious values, is gleaned from archival collections of rare books and personal writings on both sides of the Atlantic. The adventurous spirit that fortified those who undertook the dangers of transatlantic journeys to life in North America extended to their willingness to explore new ideas about their relationship with God. While some were wary of the perceived evils of different religious traditions, many were confident enough in their beliefs to explore other faiths, at times switching allegiances in a religious middle ground. Acknowledging traditional historical topics such as "religious toleration, Enlightenment moral thought, evangelicalism, imperial agendas, the state and secularism," Valeri (Washington Univ., St. Louis) contributes to the field with his sharp focus on how the openness of these immigrants to trying to understand other religious traditions worked in concert with their ideas about moral liberty. Engagingly written and blessedly short on jargon, this study is an important addition to the study of American political history and the development of religious liberty.Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Elia (St. Louis Univ.) examines the Christian master in Augustine's theology and political thought, focusing on Book 19 of The City of God, in which Augustine relates political authority to the master/slave relationship. Elia shifts the question from slavery as a natural condition to the metaphor of the master's house, a three-level hierarchy: God-good master-slave. The Christian master is subordinated to God and oriented toward restoring good order by punishment if necessary. Awkward as it is, master language is central to Augustine's theological project, and this adds complexity to contemporary political scholars' use of Augustine for democracy. Black and feminist thinkers provide a guide for recalibrating master language by pointing to the instability of the master's self-identity as a choice of absence, introduced in the displacement of the order of God by taking what is not one's own. Jesus reverses this condition by taking on "the form of a slave" and demonstrating the obedience of God-in-flesh in the nothingness of the servant's place through crucifixion--the Roman slave-punishment--thus reestablishing community with God from the human condition affected by sin. Excellent source work, close textual analysis, and perspicuity of the philosophical challenge of thinking constructively within a tradition.Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.